The L.A. Times music blog

Live review: Kris Kristofferson at Disney Hall

November 2, 2009 | 12:44
pm

The singer-songwriter keeps it close to the bone in a no-frills acoustic solo
show.

"Closer to the Bone," the title track from Kris
Kristofferson’s latest album, made an ideal choice as the opening number at
the esteemed singer and songwriter's solo show Sunday night at Walt Disney
Concert Hall. It addresses the tendency as the years go by to hone in on those
things that truly matter most and dispense with anything else that can sap
precious time and attention.

Coming from the
heartbeat

Nothing but the truth now

Everything is
sweeter

Closer to the bone

The song also outlined
Kristofferson's minimalist performance: just acoustic guitar with the occasional
addition of harmonica mounted in the standard-issue folk singer's neck
brace.

"Well, it ain't Dylan," he said after his rudimentary mouth harp
solo in "Jesus Was a Capricorn," "but it's all we got here." In fact, it was
very much on a par with Dylan's signature harmonica wheeze.

The evening
was stripped down even by no-frills solo acoustic concert standards. Each of
more than two dozen songs, offered up living room-style with simple
finger-picked guitar accompaniment, was punctuated with a brisk "Thank you"
before the near-capacity crowd could start to applaud.

Kristofferson also
largely avoided chatting with the audience. What comments he had about his music
were often slipped in during the song. On "Shipwrecked in the Eighties," he
altered what originally had been a reference to Tonto to acknowledge the recent
passing of his close friend and longtime musical associate Stephen
Bruton:

So you turn to your trusty old partner

To share
some old feelings

And you find to your shock
that

Your faithful companion is gone ("So long,
Stephen")

In the context of the night and the overall tone of his
recent work, it was a quiet reminder to value loved ones while they are still
with us.

As ruggedly handsome as ever and looking a couple of decades
younger than his 73 years might suggest, Kristofferson included the touchstone
songs with which he launched his career nearly four decades ago: "Me and Bobby
McGee," "Help Me Make It Through the Night," "For the Good Times" and "Sunday
Mornin' Comin' Down."

He also folded in lesser-known pieces, including
one he recorded in the early '80s on an album with Willie Nelson, Dolly
Parton and Brenda Lee, "Here Comes That Rainbow Again," an endearing tale of
random acts of kindness begetting more kindnesses.

When he got to "Sunday
Mornin' " toward the end of the 85-minute set, it begged the question of whether
there's ever been a more richly evocative opening line in a song than this one:

Well I woke up Sunday morning

With no way to hold my
head that didn't hurt

And the beer I had for breakfast wasn't
bad

So I had one more for dessert

The poetry of his
lyrics remains, but on "Closer to the Bone" and its 2006 companion piece "This
Old Road," his writing more often manifests with haiku-like brevity. "Perfect
strangers sitting down face to face/Like we've never met before," he sang at the
outset of "Love Don't Live Here Anymore," which beautifully captures the
emptiness of played-out romance.

Given the caliber of Kristofferson's
remarkable body of work, you could hardly ask for more from a performance --
except perhaps to allow the songs to blossom fully with the kind of additional
musical textures producer Don Was has supplied on the veteran's most recent
efforts. A rhythmic bass line might have given "Me and Bobby McGee" a bit more
momentum, and some aching steel guitar would have fleshed out "For the Good
Times" beautifully.

It's obvious that fleshing things out isn't high on
Kristofferson's agenda these days. But for anyone who values the musical half of
the songwriting equation as much as the lyric portion, he might just throw us a
bone.